Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Fringe: The Man Who Sold the World

So thanks to his Observer upgrade, Pacey watches the hypothetical movements of a particular Observer as he hypothetically walks around Manhattan, just hypothetically cold bumping into Matrix references before hypothetically getting into a car and driving away. Pacey then steps into traffic, messing up the timing of the car that he saw in his hypothetical vision, and the Observer in actual time does not get into it. It’s a little confusing, but the gist of it is that Pacey can see possible futures unfold and is messing with them. Cool trick. With a smile at Olivia, Jr.’s resistance poster, Pacey gives That One Rebel Guy a call, asking for his assistance.

Pacey returns to the Harvard lab — WHICH I NEED TO REMIND EVERYONE, AGAIN, IS IN BOSTON, WHICH IS NOWHERE NEAR MANHATTAN, BUT WHATEVER — with more laser fuel, and Bishop is all irritated with him for taking so long and Olivia is all irritated with him for not letting her come along/being a weird standoffish robot/not sleeping. Suddenly a bunch of Brownshirts’ jeeps and cars pull up and Brownshirts march around right outside the lab, but they don’t find the Fringies so it’s cool. (Although the whole point of this baffles me. I suppose it comes into play in a future episode?)

The Fringies remove Tape #5 from the amber, and on it Tape Bishop explains that they will need two of those cylindrical beacon thingamajigs which they will find them in an old lab that Bishop and Bell used to use. The beacons will be locked in a storage facility that can be opened with Bell’s hand. So THAT’S why he was with us in the amber! Bell realizes. Well, that, and he claimed that he wanted to help us defeat the Observers, only to betray us, AsteriskAstrid reminds him. Pacey reminds Bishop that he called Pacey for help, and by the time Pacey had arrived, Bell had led the Observers to their location, and so Bishop ambered the lot of them. SO, let’s get Bell’s hand and go see what they can find at the old lab …

… or they would if it wasn’t covered in a huge pile of rubble. Pacey uses his Observer superpowers to find the entrance under the mess, which leads to a nasty earbleed, gross. The Fringies try to figure out how, exactly, to get through the mess without attracting unwanted Observer attention: anti-matter batons will anti-matter the lab along with the rubble, and any sort of heavy machinery will be detected. HMM. And that’s when they decide that maybe they should contact Mrs. Roboto, as she might have something in her vast warehouse of magic tricks that they could use.

Meanwhile, Pacey receives a call from That One Rebel Guy letting him know that he wasn’t able to swap out the Observer’s briefcase as Pacey asked — the Observer didn’t forget his briefcase at the park like Pacey said he was going to. UGH, FINE, I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF I GUESS, Pacey huffs in his Observer mind. Pacey then explains to the Fringies that he will not be going to visit Mrs. Roboto with them, he’s got other important rebel business to take care of. Olivia has a worried.

The group (minus Pacey) magically arrives at the Ministry of Science in Brooklyn where Olivia and Mrs. Roboto are finally reunited (O HAI! O HAI!, crying, hugs). Olivia and Bishop explain that they were hoping that she might be able to give them a magical machine that will solve their rubble problem. I have just the thing! Mrs. Roboto exclaims, and they can pick it up around the back of the building. This gives Mrs. Roboto some time to chat with Bishop and ask him if he’s angry with her for restoring his brain slices. Bishop isn’t angry — she just did what she had to. Mrs. Roboto then wonders if he’s noticed any personality changes, and Bishop’s like, No worries, Pacey won’t let me be that jerk again. It’s all good. And then some minion comes out to meet them and Mrs. Roboto tells him to give Dr. Bishop anything he wants, YES, IT’S THAT DR. BISHOP, and the minion is all ERMAHGERD, YER MAH HERO.

And so the minion gives AsteriskAstrid and Olivia a run-down on how to use the magical machines that will solve their rubble problem, while Mrs. Roboto lectures Bishop on the risks of depending too much on Pacey to keep him from becoming a jerk again. She thought her love would be enough to keep Bell from being a jerk, and look how well that turned out. And then Bishop jerks that Bell never loved her, and Mrs. Roboto is all, HEY, GUESS WHAT, THE JERK STORE CALLED, AND THEY’RE RUNNING OUT OF YOU.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Pacey meets with That One Rebel Guy, and has him describe what happened: That One Rebel Guy saw the Observer in the park, like Pacey said. Pacey asks if there was a little girl playing nearby? Did she distract the Observer? That One Rebel Guy is alarmed that Pacey knew about the kid, but notes that the Observer wasn’t distracted by her, but instead was talking on his comm. THAT’S THE VARIABLE! Pacey realizes. HE WAS TALKING ON HIS COMM.

Pacey instructs That One Rebel Guy to go to a particular address, and wait outside. At 6:17, a couple of Observers will enter the building and That One Rebel Guy is to call Pacey when they do.

Pacey then hotwires himself a car where he has a brain melt. OWOWOWOWOWOWOW. It passes, and Pacey heads off to lunch at an Observer cafe where they are all eating rare roast beef with jalapeños and tabasco, which still sounds delicious to me because I am an emotionless scientist from the future. Pacey delivers a briefcase to the coat check girl, who warns him that the other clientele will read his mind if he’s not careful. In response, Pacey shows off by instructing her to answer the phone that hasn’t rung yet. So, yeah, Pacey’s not worried, thanks.

Pacey has a seat and watches as everything falls into place just as he predicted: The Observer he’s been keeping tabs on arrives, and checks his briefcase which the coat check girl places right next to Pacey’s. Pacey then returns to the coat check just as the coat check girl receives a phone call from her errant boyfriend, and is distracted enough to not realize Pacey is asking for the Observer’s briefcase, not the one he originally gave her. The ol’ switcheroo taken care of, Pacey leaves with a smirk.

And so the Observer takes Pacey’s briefcase back with him to the building that That One Rebel Guy is staking out, heads upstairs for an Observer meeting, opens the case and KABOOM, an explosion happens, Observer faces melt and That One Rebel Guy watches as a single fedora falls to the ground. CHEW ON THAT, OBSERVERS — OH RIGHT, YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOUR JAWS MELTED OFF YOUR FACES.

Pacey returns to the lab (which is presumably somewhere in the New York area) where Olivia, AsteriskAstrid and Bishop are setting up Mrs. Roboto’s Magical Rubble Clearing Rods. After receiving confirmation from That One Rebel Guy that the Observers’ jaws did in fact melt off, Pacey lies to Olivia about not actually meeting with That One Rebel Guy. Olivia has a skeptical.

But then Mrs. Roboto’s Magical Rubble Clearing Rods work and everyone is all HOORAY! and they descend down the stairs into Bishop and Bell’s old lab. After tinkering with the electricity, Bishop pulls out Bell’s severed hand waves it in front of a monitor and it allows them inside. HOORAY! They poke around for a while, and Bishop discovers that Bell stole his Bowie albums (OUTRAGE). Pacey finally discovers a safe, and after a brief moment of panic, Bishop recalls the combination: 5-20-10. However, inside, there are no beacons. Merely a photograph of Mrs. Roboto (which Bishop tucks into his jacket pocket) and a small silver disc. OOOH, THAT BELL! Bishop grouses. That is until Pacey touches the disc and the beacons bore their way up through the floor and everyone is like woah.

As they make their way outside with their beacons, Olivia cautions the group to be careful because they don’t know if there will be anyone waiting for them. But Pacey just stomps right out to his car with No Worries, before announcing that they should split up to be safe. Olivia has a suspicious.

Before returning to the lab, however, Bishop has Olivia take him back to see Mrs. Roboto, where he gives her the photograph he found in the safe and tells her that he was wrong, Bell did love her, and it still wasn’t enough to prevent Bell from becoming a universe-destroying, friend-betraying jerk. And that’s why Bishop wants her to re-lobotomize him, so that he doesn’t drive away everyone he cares about.

Bishop then returns to his lab where over a little David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” he contemplates the pieces that he so far has collected. What they all do? Who knows. AsteriskAstrid checks on him, and then, with a sweet, sad little peck on his cheek, leaves him alone. SAD SADNESS.

Olivia returns to Olivia Jr.’s apartment, which still hasn’t been put on lockdown by the Observers for some reason, and finds that Pacey has set up drawing boards covered with timelines of the Observers’ movements. He explains to Olivia that he’s been following the Observers, manipulating them, and he finally managed to get several of them in the same place at the same time today, where he used the toxin from flight 627 to melt their jaws off. Ta-da! Olivia is aghast, and tells Pacey that he can’t do this — it’s dangerous, only to have him say it with her simultaneously. !!!! And that’s when Pacey reveals the next stage in his plan: KAHL HIMMLER. Olivia backs slowly out of the apartment as Pacey works feverishly. The elevator! That’s the ticket! That’s how he’ll kill him!

And that’s when Pacey pulls out a large a clump of hair. Yikes!

As we all know, I am woefully behind with these recaps and worried I’m not possibly going to be able to catch up before next Friday. We shall see. The point is, I have to keep this brief, sadly, because there is quite a bit to unpack here.

The major theme of this episode is the paralleling of Bishop and Pacey each losing their humanity. While Pacey is embracing his new-found powers of observation and control, Bishop is terrified to return to his previous brilliant condition, knowing that it comes at the price of those whom he loves. This splintering of identity is reflected in the lyrics of “The Man Who Sold the World:”

We passed upon the stair – We spoke of ‘was’ and ‘when’.

Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend.

Which came as some surprise – I spoke in to his eyes.

I thought you died alone… a long, long time ago.

(Which, interestingly, was itself inspired by the Mearns poem “Antigonish:”

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away…)

In this episode we once again see the use of the descent as the team goes down into a subterranean lab to retrieve the beacons. This season’s repeated use of the descent is fascinating to me — the Fringies seem to only be going further and further down, one long katabasis, never to emerge into the light. In this episode, the repetitive descents reflect Bishop and Pacey’s own psychological transformations: they are going deeper, darker, further away from love and humanity. But the descent also reflects the darker tone of the season (on a show that was never particularly light to begin with), and I worry things will only become darker before they eventually resolve in something resembling hope. Of course, the story of Orpheus, one of the most famous katabasis stories, ends with Eurydice vanishing forever, so maybe we’re not in for a happy ending.

But leaving me with a little hope, I noticed the repeated use of the bridge upon which Mrs. Roboto interacts with the Fringies. Mrs. Roboto is first reunited with Olivia on the bridge (Question: Did Olivia forget her past with Mrs. Roboto entirely? I am a little unclear on this point.), and later on the same bridge, has the revealing conversation with Bishop in which he reaches out to her for help with his personality disorder. Bridges represent progress, overcoming obstacles, passing from one condition to another. Perhaps the use of the bridge here is a symbol of hope, symbolizing that Bishop is finally able to address his own problems; and that now Olivia knows the truth about Pacey, that she can somehow help him move back towards the light, she can convince him to cross back over towards her and towards humanity.

Easter Eggs

5-20-10 was the combination to the Jacksonville center where Bell and Bishop experimented on the Kortexiphan Kidz.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.